The Berlin branch of the Social Democratic Party’s youth wing has formally proposed abolishing marriage in Germany entirely — replacing it with “cohabitation partnerships” and demanding a constitutional amendment to do so.
The motion, titled “Down with the patriarchy, even if it feels romantic,” was presented ahead of a Berlin SPD conference scheduled for May 8-9. According to the Berlin Young Socialists, known as the Jusos, marriage is a key institution of patriarchy that secures the “oppression of women by cis-men” and “restricts freedom and self-determination through its claim to permanence.”
The proposal argues that “marriage serves the chauvinistic, capitalist nation-state as an instrument for enforcing misogynistic, anti-queer, classist, and racist policies.” The motion calls for marriage to be replaced entirely with cohabiting partnerships stripped of any permanence claim.
The proposal presents a direct challenge to Article 6 of Germany’s Basic Law, which explicitly places marriage under constitutional protection. Any change would require a constitutional amendment — a high bar that the proposal itself acknowledges.
The Jusos’ motion is consistent with a broader SPD push against marriage-related protections. The party has separately been pressing to eliminate Germany’s spousal tax-splitting system — a mechanism the German Federal Constitutional Court has previously ruled is not a “tax benefit” but a constitutionally required element of appropriate taxation for married couples.
Germany recorded one of Europe’s lowest fertility rates in 2024. A political party formally proposing to eliminate the constitutional institution most closely associated with stable family formation and child-rearing is making a statement about where its priorities lie — and it is not with demographic recovery.
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